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Sounds like energy production recently. While oil was cheap enough we had no reason to invest in cleaner tech. Even the threat of climate change isn’t enough.
by mason55 4y ago
Sounds like energy production recently. While oil was cheap enough we had no reason to invest in cleaner tech. Even the threat of climate change isn’t enough. It’s only when oil gets real expensive that we invest in alternatives.
- 3pt14159 4y agoImagine all of those minds that went into oil extraction and where else they could have been better spent over the years. I know turbines really leveraged computer models to achieve such stunning efficiency, but in all honesty I don't think it would have taken much past the 70s for us to have achieved nuclear / renewables at similar energy output as oil / gas at the same timeframe if we didn't have the shortcut available for so long.
- Gravityloss 4y agoOil extraction engineering has a pretty phenomenal return on investment. If oil sells at 100 dollars per barrel, that's 600 dollars per cubic meter. If you produce a cubic meter per second (1/200th of world production), that's 50 million dollars per day. But certainly, nuclear or renewables could have been developed more and earlier.
- marcosdumay 4y agoA lot of very smart people went into nuclear up to the 80's. It didn't make much of a difference. People severely underestimate the impact computers have on our society and the dynamism of the current day R&D. Even here on HN.